I'm not sure exactly where this should go but what I'm looking for are games that anyone has made using models created with Wings 3D. Also I would just like to see what some of you are able to do with Wings so any links to Wings art and such would be nice as well.

One question I have is how do you animate the models if there is no built in function to do it? Are there any relatively cheap applications that can do this?

As usual thanks for all the fish.... er I mean help. Douglas Adams was a very funny person.

Don't be fooled by the app. The models will look the same on any 3D app. It's all about the talent of the artist and the textures applied to the model.
The app itself is just a tool for creating such things.

On the topic of 3D, does anybody know of a FREE 3D modeller app (for Mac obviously) that works with a 1 button mouse? That's one of the reasons why I didn't use Wings3D. Oh and don't tell me about Blender. Tried it and got lost in the interface

OneSadCookie Wrote:Animation seems to be a huge sticking-point though. Blender is free and will animate stuff, but the UI is horrible.

I tried Blender way back before it was opensourced and absolutely hated it. Very recently I gave it another shot, and as of version 2.3 or so the UI has improved tremendously (menus!). Better yet, they now have decent documentation and video tutorials available. Now, it's still not the easiest thing to learn but if you're at all proficient in any other 3D app it'll take maybe a day or two before you can become productive with Blender. Users new to 3D should give it at least a week, but I'd say the learning curve is at least on par or better than Lightwave or 3DStudio.

I've been a long time Cinema4DXL/BodyPaint user and was pretty much set to upgrade from versions 7/1 to versions 9/2 when I discovered Blender+Wings provided equally powerful low-poly modeling, UV mapping, and even subsurface tools - for free - saved me around $1300 USD. Moral of this story: If you haven't tried Blender in a while, give it another shot...

Taxxodium: If you want to be productive in *any* 3D app (free or otherwise) buy a three button scrollwheel mouse - you can get a half-decent Logitech for $10-$15...

I used wings to model the objects in BitRacer (ships and cones only), I exported to OBJ and load this with my code. The source code is available here: http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/usr/will/bitracer_src.zip . The code even does cel shading for you. I have also included all my .wings files and most of my other resources, if you are interested.

I also used Blender to create the race tracks, exporting to my files from a python script I wrote. As has been mentioned before, these are the two apps to try. 3D isn't easy on a computer. Blender isn't intuitive, but it will save you a lot of money.

I concur with Frank, you'll need a mouse to get anywhere.

Nick: Wings comes with pretty good integration with yafray a decent free renderer. http://www.yafray.org/ Or use Blender which is getting more powerful all the time.

Nick Wrote:Does anybody here have any of their games that use models from Wings? I would really like to see the quality (in game) of these models.

Okugai's "energy shields" (or is it "force fields"?), and shield generators were made with Wings, and exported to OBJ. Then I converted those OBJ to a custom binary format to save space.
Okugai's 3D animated logo (yes, it is animated even if it's not that noticeable), was also made in Wings (I exported the Japanese char to eps, imported it in Illustrator, converted it to paths, exported it as .ai, and finally imported it in Wings 3D. Then I saved it as OBJ, applied a "twist" deform FX, and saved again, more twist, another save, etc. (4 frames -> 4 OBJ). Then, I converted that to the same binary format I used for the shields & generators, which can contain several frames (each OBJ's vertex & normals are added as a new frame).
Very time consuming...